Friedrich Frey-Herosé

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Friedrich Frey-Herosé

Friedrich Frey-Herosé (born October 12, 1801 in Lindau in Lake Constance , † September 22, 1873 in Bern ) was a Swiss politician , officer and businessman . He was chief of staff in the Sonderbund War and during the Neuchâtel trade . After serving in the government of the canton of Aargau for eleven years , he was elected to the Federal Council in 1848 as a representative of the liberal center (today's FDP ) , to which he belonged until 1866. He made a significant contribution to the abolition of internal tariffs and concluded trade agreements with numerous countries. Frey-Herosé was Federal President in 1854 and 1860 and Vice President in 1853 and 1859. In his private life, he showed a great deal of commitment to the promotion of education and culture.

biography

Youth and student days

He was born in Lindau on Lake Constance as the son of the manufacturer Daniel Frey and Anna Elisabeth Sulzer. Due to the uncertain political situation - in 1806 Lindau had become part of the Kingdom of Bavaria and briefly occupied by insurgents from Vorarlberg in 1809 during the coalition wars - the family moved to Aarau in 1810 . His grandfather and great-uncle had already settled there as merchants in the 1770s and acquired citizenship. Both held the office of mayor at different times , as did his father later. Brother August Frey was born there in 1811 .

At the Cantonal School Aarau Friedrich Frey acquired the Matura . He then studied chemistry at the Collège de France in Paris . In 1824 he married the daughter of a manufacturer, Henriette Herosé, whose surname he added to his own to avoid confusion; the couple had five children (he divorced in 1849 and married Emilie Langel in the same year). In 1821 he took over the management of his father's chemical factory in der Telli , which had been founded eight years earlier . During a visit to Paris in 1830 he was actively involved in the July Revolution and took part in the street fighting. In 1836/37 he built a cotton spinning mill next to his chemical factory; Chocolat Frey , founded in 1887, took over this factory building in 1900 and used it for chocolate production until 1967.

Cantonal politics and military career

The Federal General Staff during the Sonderbund War of 1847. Front left Colonel Friedrich Frey-Herosé as Chief of Staff

Frey-Herosé began his military career in the cantonal army in 1827 as a second lieutenant in the infantry . Two years later he was promoted to captain and in 1832 to major , at the same time he became a member of the cantonal military commission. In 1834 he was already a lieutenant colonel . Also in 1834 he was elected to the Grand Council as a representative of the Othmarsingen constituency. In November 1837, he was elected to the Small Council (as the cantonal government was then called). Frey-Herosé took over the management of the police system and in this function was significantly involved in the legislation in the areas of naturalization, hospitality and lotteries. In 1839, 1842 and 1845 he held the office of Landammann .

As President of the Military Commission, Frey-Herosé was also Commander-in-Chief of the Aargau troops. In January 1841 he led an army of around 10,000 men into Freiamt . Shortly after the adoption of a liberal constitution, unrest broke out there, but it was quickly put down. Following a motion by Grand Councilor Augustin Keller , the cantonal government decided to abolish all Aargau monasteries, as they were considered to be the cause of the unrest. Frey-Herosé personally carried out the abolition of the monasteries Muri , Wettingen and Fahr (after the settlement of the Aargau monastery dispute , the latter was reversed). In 1847 and 1848 he headed the education department and built up the teachers' college in the former Wettingen monastery.

After the free troops of 1844 and 1845, the tense relations between liberal and conservative cantons deteriorated further. Frey-Herosé, who had refused to take command of the second free group, was elected to the Federal War Council by the Diet in 1846 . As Chief of Staff under General Guillaume Henri Dufour , he was involved in the Sonderbund War in 1847 . After the Sonderbund was broken up , Frey-Herosé was a member of the commission that drafted the new federal constitution. In the first elections to the National Council , he achieved the best result of all Aargau candidates.

Federal Council

The Federal Assembly elected Frey-Herosé on November 16, 1848 as the sixth Federal Councilor . In the second ballot he received 70 of 130 votes cast (52 votes went to Wilhelm Matthias Naeff and 8 votes to other people). After two days of reflection, he accepted the election, whereupon he resigned from his cantonal offices. When the Federal Council was constituted in Erlacherhof on November 21 , Frey-Herosé drew up the business regulations for the new body and, based on his previous experience as a manufacturer, was assigned the trade and customs department . As its head, he reorganized the federal customs system. These included a new customs law, the abolition of internal tariffs and tolls for roads and bridges, and the establishment of border controls at the external borders. In the following years he concluded trade agreements with the neighboring states of Sardinia-Piedmont (1851), Baden (1852) and Bavaria (1853).

For the compliment elections customary at the time - federal councilors had to be elected as national councilors in order to secure the legitimacy of the people - he ran in the constituency of Aargau-Südwest and always achieved the best result. In 1854 he was Federal President and, as such, headed the Political Department for a year . As Foreign Minister, he succeeded in getting Austria , which was then ruling over the Kingdom of Lombardy-Veneto , to lift the economic blockade against the canton of Ticino , which was considered the refuge of the revolution .

From 1855 to 1859 Frey-Herosé was head of the military department . On October 15, 1855, he opened the Swiss Federal Polytechnic School (today's ETH Zurich ) as a representative of the government . During the uprising of royalists in the canton of Neuchâtel , which at that time was also a Prussian principality, he formed the negotiating delegation together with his council colleague Constant Fornerod . When a war with Prussia threatened after the suppression of the uprising, he took a short leave of absence from the Federal Council in order to assist Dufour as Chief of Staff again. With the Treaty of Paris , in which Prussia waived all claims, the conflict over the Neuchâtel trade ended in 1857 . The experience gained was to form the basis of a reform of the general staff, but the corresponding law failed in parliament in January 1859.

In 1860 Frey-Herosé was Federal President for a second time and again Foreign Minister. He came under political pressure after a conviction, initially only expressed in confidential discussions, had become public. In the Savoy trade, he took the position that Switzerland should not interfere in the question of the cession of Savoy to France, even if a territorial claim was legally justifiable. As a result, he brought radical circles around Federal Councilor Jakob Stämpfli against him who had called for the annexation of Haute-Savoie . In December 1860 and 1863 he was therefore only just barely re-elected as Federal Councilor, in the latter case with an absolute majority of 84 votes (or five votes ahead of Emil Welti ).

From 1861 Frey-Herosé headed the trade and customs department again. As one of the first Swiss, he recognized the coming economic importance of Japan and made a trade agreement possible in 1864. A trade agreement concluded with France in the same year was of great economic importance. This indirectly led to the equality of Jews in Switzerland two years later , as France did not allow its citizens to be differentiated and it would have been impossible in the long term to place Swiss Jews in a worse position than French ones. In accordance with his principle that the whole world is the market for Switzerland, Frey-Herosé also signed a trade agreement with the Kingdom of Hawaii . On December 6, 1866, he announced his resignation for the end of the year. He remained in the National Council until 1872.

Private life

In his youth, Frey-Herosé was a member of the Society for Patriotic Culture founded by Heinrich Zschokke in 1811 (today's Aargau Natural Research Society ), whose aim was to promote culture and education in the canton of Aargau. He himself gave numerous lectures and was president of this society from 1840 to 1848. In his free time he was busy observing plants and animals. The enthusiastic ornithologist put together a large collection of prepared birds, which the canton later acquired and which can now be seen in part in the Naturama in Aarau.

After his resignation as Federal Councilor, Frey-Herosé became interested in the culture of Japan and even learned the Japanese language . The trip of the trade delegation commissioned by him in 1862 to the Far Eastern country served as inspiration for the Japanese Games in Schwyz . Frey-Herosé died three weeks before his 73rd birthday. The Frey-Herosé-Strasse in Aarau is named after him. The assembly building of the Masonic Lodge "Zur Brudertreue", of which he was a member, is also located on this .

The estate of Friedrich Frey-Herosé located in the State Archives of Aargau .

See also

literature

  • Jürg Stüssi-Lauterburg : Friedrich Frey-Herosé . In: Urs Altermatt (Ed.): Das Bundesratslexikon . NZZ Libro , Zurich 2019, ISBN 978-3-03810-218-2 , p. 63-68 .
  • Biographical Lexicon of the Canton of Aargau 1803–1957 . In: Historical Society of the Canton of Aargau (Ed.): Argovia . tape 68/69 . Verlag Sauerländer, Aarau 1958, p. 229 .
  • Hans Schmid: Federal Councilor Frey-Herose 1801–1873. Three decades of Aargau and Swiss history . Sauerländer Verlag, Aarau 1917.

Web links

Commons : Friedrich Frey-Herosé  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Stüssi-Lauterburg: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 63.
  2. ^ Gabriela Suter: The Telli in Transition: from an industrial to a residential area . In: Ortsbürgergemeinde Aarau (Hrsg.): Aarauer Neujahrsblätter . tape 92 . here + now , Baden 2018, ISBN 978-3-03919-429-2 , p. 52-55 .
  3. ↑ a b Life pictures from Aargau 1803–1953 . In: Historical Society of the Canton of Aargau (Ed.): Argovia . tape 65 . Verlag Sauerländer, Aarau 1958, p. 187-188 .
  4. ↑ Stüssi-Lauterburg: The Federal Council Lexicon. Pp. 63-64.
  5. ↑ Pictures of life from Aargau 1803–1953. Pp. 189-190.
  6. ↑ a b Stüssi-Lauterburg: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 64.
  7. ↑ Stüssi-Lauterburg: The Federal Council Lexicon. Pp. 65-66.
  8. ↑ a b Stüssi-Lauterburg: The Federal Council Lexicon. P. 67.
  9. ↑ Urs Kuhn: 200 years of Aargau Natural Research Society. (PDF, 548 kB) Naturama , February 2012, accessed on April 1, 2019 .
predecessor Office successor
- Member of the Swiss Federal Council
1848–1866 		Emil Welti
personal data
SURNAME Frey-Herosé, Friedrich
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Swiss entrepreneur, officer and politician
DATE OF BIRTH October 12, 1801
PLACE OF BIRTH Lindau (Bodensee) (Bavaria)
DATE OF DEATH September 22, 1873
Place of death Bern